<p>Like a painter, Graham Mort builds through a steady accumulation of precise and beautifully-observed details. The pictures that emerge are often surprising, even shocking in their effects. Mort is adept at imbuing a landscape with the moods and memories of its inhabitants. Touching, thoughtful and articulate, <em>A Night on the Lash...

<p>The title poem of this collection is set in Murano, home to the Venetian glass-making industry. The alchemical processes of mirror-making, its &rsquo;furnaces and transubstantiations, / amalgams of tin and quicksilver&rsquo; become a guiding metaphor for the poet. Cityscapes are haunted by memories both personal and historic....

<p><em>The Never-Never</em> is the dazzling debut collection of poetry by one of the UK&rsquo;s most distinctive new voices. From joyriders in the rain-lashed back streets and housing estates of Wales, to London, California and beyond, Kathryn Gray gives us compelling tales of love and loss, of friendship, exile and the...

<p>Intended to be read from beginning to end, <em>Quiver</em> is a book-length poem - a murder-mystery - which explores the nature of creativity.</p><p>Fay Thomas, a poet with writer&rsquo;s block, becomes a murder suspect after she stumbles over the body of her husband&rsquo;s former lover, Mara, as she runs...

<p>This substantial book features poems from the five decades of John Powell Ward&rsquo;s career. It opens with early, uncollected pieces &ndash; some of which were experimental and concrete &ndash; moves on to the traditionally styled poems of the 70s and 80s and then towards a late flowering in the 90s, which features a...

<p>Winner of the inaugural Roland Mathias Prize, Christine Evans&rsquo; <em>Selected Poems</em> is an immensely wideranging and accomplished overview of this major poet&rsquo;s work.<br /><br />This persuasive volume by Christine Evans selects poems from her four published collections. Often set in the wind-...

<p>Frances Williams&rsquo; third collection of poetry features a cast of quirky characters: from lovers, friends and children to Andy Warhol, Courtney Love and Wilson &lsquo;Snowflake&rsquo; Bently, the first man to photograph a snow crystal. Her voice is oblique, tender, reflective, as adept at spinning unusual conceits as...

<p>In her fourth collection of poetry, Hilary Llewellyn-Williams revisits many of her favorite themes and subjects. These lyric poems explore the natural world, the environment, and the condition of women. Llewellyn-Williams also addresses a shadowy semi-pagan interface between nature and spirituality, in which the natural world is not just...

<p><em>North by South</em> offers a choice selection from John Davies&rsquo; substantial body of work. From the slate quarries of north Wales to the steelworks town of his youth in south Wales to the dirt roads of the American West, the poet&rsquo;s travels through rough landscapes and his meetings with the characters who...

<p>Robert Seatter&rsquo;s debut collection is characterised by an open, highly personal tone; his style is fresh and uncluttered; his imagery charged and luminous. A love for Italy pervades the book, from a witty poem on an early language text, Living Italian (1955) to &rsquo;The Book of Milan&rsquo; series which concludes the...

<p>&quot;Poetry as white-knuckle ride&quot; is how <em>Poetry Wales</em> described Sarah Corbett&rsquo;s debut, <em>The Red Wardrobe</em>. Her eagerly-awaited second collection, <em>The Witch Bag</em>, is as powerful as its predecessor, and is sure to cement Corbett&rsquo;s reputation as...

<p>Vuyelwa Carlin has established a reputation as a highly distinctive stylist. Published internationally and instantly recognisable, her poems feature an intricate, mosaic-like technique.</p><p><em>Marble Sky</em>, her third collection, is in three varied sections. It opens with &rsquo;Bottles of Blood&rsquo...

<p>In Paul Groves&rsquo;s fourth book, which consolidates his reputation as one of the most able and consistent poets of his generation, we encounter such unlikely stablemates as Rudolf Hess, Virginia Woolf, Dylan Thomas, and Otto von Bismarck. It ends with &rsquo;The Orthodox Chapel of St. Dyfrig&rsquo;, an anagrammatical tour...

<p>Lying and truth-telling are a matter of choice; our innate capacity for mendacity is the source of all story-telling. The title poem poem sets the thematic tone for this collection which explores the interface between fiction and reality.</p><p>In &#39;Fanfic&#39;, Pugh travels into cyberspace where devoted fans...

<p>Heaven&rsquo;s Gate is the eighth collection for Seren by one of Wales&rsquo; best poets. Formally astute, subtle and persuasive in tone, evincing enviable clarity and insight, these poems address subject matter as diverse as forest fires in California, an eclipse recalled from childhood, and a World War One battlefield. Most...

<p>A wry, singular wit, an astringent honesty, and a virtuoso use of traditional forms characterise Douglas Houston&rsquo;s new book. At its (broken) heart is the not-uncommon crisis of the break-up of a marriage. Houston spins a sharp series of villanelles on the subject, at once poignant and merciless. This is poetry with an ironic...

<p><em>Hummadruz</em> brings together Hilary Llewellyn-Williams&rsquo;s first two collections, the long-absent <em>The Tree Calendar</em> (1987) and <em>Book of Shadows</em> (1990). The former includes her reputation-making title sequence of poems reflecting on the Celtic calendar, in which each month...

<p>In <em>Food</em> the multi-talented and endlessly inventive Peter Finch keenly observes the dark forces that afflict us and then relentlessly skewers them with a quick wit, or twists form to give alternative versions, inflicting a random beauty on the stale or predictable.</p><p>He fearlessly lampoons the cliches...

<p>Surviving a murder attempt generates the clarity, compression and pure celebratory drive of this book&rsquo;s title sequence of fourteen syllabic sonnets. These form the spinal cord of the entire collection, from which nerve endings reach out into a dizzying range of poetic matter, while retaining the book&rsquo;s essential...

<p>Samantha Wynne Rhydderch&#39;s intense, uncompromising style recalls the confessional poets but her vivid narratives often conjure dark personas: men on the edge of breakdown or women in the midst of ecstasy.</p><p>The poet&rsquo;s fascination with the ferocious and marginal lead her to daring risks with language. This...

<p><em>The Bed of Memory</em> was shortlisted for the 2002 Arts Council of Wales Book of the Year Award. These poems are informed by layers of memory, but never weighed down by them.</p><p>Newcomers will appreciate the accessible style and the universal themes touched upon while even those familiar with her work will...

<p>Playful, experimental, intense, ironic, these strikingly original poems by Don Rodgers are evidence of a passionate sensibility that delights in a vocabulary as sumptuous as the gardens he writes about. A cool honesty, quiet humour and a compassionate tenderness towards his subjects are hallmarks of his style.</p>

<p>A sense of mystery and mortality infuses these beautiful poems by Ruth Bidgood. Her deep engagement with the landscape and history of her part of Wales is matched by a metaphysical questioning as to the purpose and meaning of experience.</p><p>The voices that she invokes are often the &rsquo;unremembered&rsquo; ones: a...

<p>The poems in Wild Blue are the product of a restless and inventive intelligence. Capable of ruminating with grace and flair on such diverse personalities as Isaac Newton and Elvis Presley, Williams moves confidently between the metaphysical and the modern, combining a delight in abstract ideas with sensuous physicality. This new...